Seven new Partners at Ward Hadaway

Sophie Bohill, Saji Bratch, Matt Cormack, Sarah Crilly, Tom Pollard, Julia Thomson and Graham Vials have all now joined the partnership at the firm, which operates from offices in Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester.

The newly promoted Partners work in a range of different departments across Ward Hadaway, emphasising the broad spectrum of services which the firm provides to clients.

Sophie Bohill is a Property lawyer who works with some of the major development businesses across the North in both the residential and commercial property sectors, developing a particular specialism in housebuilder work. She has acted for national and regional housebuilders in connection with complicated site acquisitions and disposals for residential and mixed use developments.

Saji Bratch also works in Ward Hadaway’s Property department where she specialises in advising public sector organisations including local government, the NHS and education. Her specialist expertise includes advice on the acquisition, disposal and management of sites and portfolios, complex regeneration and development work, landlord and tenant matters and public/private partnership developments.

Commercial lawyer Matt Cormack acts for a wide range of clients from early stage and start-up companies to large multi-nationals. He has extensive experience in corporate governance, corporate structures and commercial contracts, across a range of sectors, with a particular focus on advising technology businesses and has acted as legal project manager on several projects for multi-national corporate groups.

Family and matrimonial lawyer Sarah Crilly has over 18 years’ experience dealing with divorce and financial issues. She deals with all aspects of family breakdown including divorce, finances, pre and post-nuptial agreements, separation agreements, disputes between cohabitees and private law children matters and has particular expertise in matters involving assets such as companies.

Tom Pollard is a member of Ward Hadaway’s award-winning Corporate team where he advises on acquisitions, disposals, investments, corporate structures and reorganisations. He has extensive experience working on a variety of transactions for both public and private companies across a range of sectors including pharmaceutical, aviation, engineering, manufacturing and training/education.

Property lawyer Julia Thomson has experience across the whole spectrum of property work with particular expertise in residential development and social housing. She works on behalf of national and regional house builders and land owners in all aspects of the residential development transaction, with a particular emphasis on acquiring and assembling complex sites and delivering large projects.

Graham Vials works in Ward Hadaway’s Employment team, recently named Employment Team of the Year in the Northern Law Awards. Graham provides a full range of commercially-focused employment advice to a variety of private and public sector clients, ranging from owner-managed businesses to large national companies, schools and academies, government departments and local authorities.

Jamie Martin, managing partner at Ward Hadaway, said: “We are delighted to promote no fewer than seven of our outstanding lawyers to the partnership here at Ward Hadaway.

“All seven have proved themselves to be invaluable to their respective teams and to the clients who they carry out work for and their promotions are richly deserved.

“It is particularly pleasing to see the high number of newly promoted female Partners at the firm, emphasising how committed we are to developing the careers of all of our lawyers.

“In a similar vein, many of our new Partners began their careers as trainees at Ward Hadaway and are repaying our faith and investment in their abilities.

“The in-depth expertise, extensive experience and commitment to client service excellence which all of our newly promoted Partners possess makes us look forward to the future with confidence.”

The firm now has 93 Partners and employs a total of more than 450 people across its three offices.